NSA PRISM Internet and Phone Surveillance Slides

Leaked Prism Domestic Surveillance Slides

Following are the first five slides from the leaked PRISM surveillance project by the National Security Agency. There are a total of 41 slides, the remainder of which have yet to be released, and are under the care of journalists Barton Gellman from the Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian. The slides outline the data mining connections between the National Security Agency and ten major servers in the United States : Gmail, Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google, Skype, Apple, AOL, YouTube and PalTalk

NSA PRISM Surveillance PowerPoint Slides

NSA Prism Slide 2

Facebook and Google were quick to refute the allegations that they are in fact mining data for the N.S.A, or any other regulatory body. The evidence against them collected as far back as 2009 is staggering and credible enough to get the attention of the strongest skeptics. Conspiracy Theorists have found themselves vindicated with the release of these notes, as it is hard proof to what many of been alluding to for years.

The slides crudely demonstrate the path of least resistance for data mining, in the leaked NSA Prism surveillance slides, the majority of internet traffic globally is going to travel through the United States, it does this in part because the data providers direct it to take the cheapest route, and not by physical distance or geographic mapping. A great deal of foreign data then, travels through the United States, and the easiest most efficient way to collect all of it, is to cast a wider net; one that includes domestic activities by American citizens. Twitter participants voicing in on the debate were quick to comment on the appearance of the NSA #Prism Slides, and obviously lack of expertise in which the slides were created.

The NSA Prism Surveillance slides have been called “Shockingly Awful” and “hideous” by Emiland, a freelance presentation designer, who took the liberty of redesigning the slides into a more sophisticated layout.

In 2009, the U.S National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair estimated the country’s annual budget for intelligence activities around $75 billion dollars a year. In that same year, three of the principle acquisitions were made available to the public, Google, PalTalk and Facebook. Through a venture capital firm called Accel Partners, Facebook received a $12.7 million investment that brought it to fruition. James Breyer was the acting Manager, and he also served as the Chair of the National Venture Capital Association, with Gilman Louie, CEO of In Q Tel. In Q Tel is a privately held company whose mandate is to invest in high tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the CIA and other intelligence agencies equipped with the latest in information technology.